So they recruited 37 people for a study where they took electroencephalography (EEG) scans of the brain while they used their phones. Twenty-six of the participants had smartphones with touchscreens while 11 had old-fashioned mobiles with actual keypads.

The scan results showed that there was a difference in brain activity between the two groups, with different levels of cortical activation. This was the most obvious in the area of the brain related to the thumb, and the more that participants used their smartphone, the more obvious this was – meaning our brains are more flexible and the way our senses process information is more influenced by technological change than scientists previously realised.

Dr Arko Ghosh from the University of Zurich said that the scale of the effect of the brain surprised his team, and that this could be a fertile area for future research. ‘Smartphones offer us an opportunity to understand how normal life shapes the brains of ordinary people,’ he said.